Sermon at Parish Mass and Baptism Trinity 6 2013

Isaiah 66:10-14

Galatians 6:7-16

Luke 10:1-11,16-20

The movement of liberation is escalating! Through our reading of Luke’s gospel at Sunday Mass we’ve seen how Jesus has been healing the sick, preaching peace and proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is near. And often he crosses boundaries to reach out to people who have been excluded or marginalised in some way. 

But that has all focussed on Jesus, and to some extent on the twelve Apostles, the first disciples. The twelve were called by Jesus and gathered round him, but spent some time just staying with him, listening, learning, watching what Jesus was doing, before being given authority to go and do the same themselves. But now Jesus appoints 70 more people to join him in this work. 

The big story that Luke is telling, through his Gospel and through the Acts of the Apostles, is that God is in Jesus and has come to redeem Israel, to reconcile God’s chosen people to himself, and then to extend that salvation to all the nations. There is a feeling in Luke that Israel is in captivity, in exile, and needs to be liberated. Just as the Hebrew people were kept in slavery in Egypt long ago, until they were freed by Moses. And in Luke Jesus is often compared to Moses, because the people of Israel were expecting a great prophet, a “prophet like Moses” to appear and save them. 

So Jesus appoints 70 helpers, just as Moses did. In the book of Numbers, chapter 11, Moses appointed 70 elders to help him in his work, and the Spirit of the Lord came down on them, and they received a share of his power. 

So Jesus is doing the same thing that Moses did. It is another exodus, another movement of liberation. Liberation from what? Moses led the people to freedom from slavery in Egypt. But Jesus brings a greater exodus, a greater liberation, because Jesus gives freedom from the spiritual slavery of sin and death. 

And this is what the 70 celebrate when they return from their journey. Particularly they notice that the demons submit to them, and Jesus responds that he saw Satan “falls from heaven like lightning”. 

“Heaven” here refers to the whole realm of the spiritual and the sacred, the unseen powers at work behind events in the world. When Luke focuses on Satan and the demons he is saying that the experience of people up till now has been that the hidden power at work in their lives is destructive and evil. “Heaven” is the place of spiritual power.

Now the name “Satan” means “the accuser”. So if Satan is thought to be in heaven this means that the world is being run by a principle of accusation, division, violence, and casting out. 

But the coming of Jesus shows definitively that this is not true. This is the good news of the Kingdom of God. God is not like that. God is not the accuser. God is not the one who victimises and casts out. And God is the one who is in charge. It is God, not Satan, who reigns in heaven. 

And in Jesus God has come to establish that reign on earth. He has come to save us from the whole mechanism of sacred violence which has been running the world up to now.  And when this is made known then it is seen that Satan has fallen from heaven. The principle of accusation, of victimising and casting out, is no longer in the place of spiritual power. 

Above all this is seen in the cross, the crucifixion of Jesus, where God takes the place of the victim, not the victimiser, and speaks only of forgiveness for his enemies, not of vengeance.

This is what Jesus has been preaching, and the message that the 70 disciples have been given as well. God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself and not counting our sins against us, as St Paul says in 2 Corinthians. 

But the preaching of the Kingdom, the revelation of what God is really like, brings a moment of crisis and decision. Are we to accept or reject this message? Because once you see what God is doing, you can’t continue undecided as though it doesn’t matter. It is a revelation which makes possible both faith, acceptance of Jesus and his message - and rejection. That’s alluded to in our reading, although the passage leaves out some verses in the middle where Jesus says some uncompromising things about the lakeside towns which had heard his message and rejected it. But, one way or the other, when you hear about the Kingdom of God that brings a moment of decision.

Now moments of crisis and decision don’t necessarily come to us just once. In fact the disciples had many moments of crisis following Jesus, especially as he turned towards Jerusalem and his forthcoming Passion and death. And each crisis prompts a renewed decision to accept Jesus and follow in his way - or to turn aside. 

So it is for us. In the baptism today there is a moment called “the decision” which is precisely this - we have heard the Good News of God’s Kingdom, how do we respond? Do we accept Jesus? Do we reject the devil? That decision was made for most of us when we were baptised as children, but it is one we will need to renew and make our own, not just at formal moments such as our confirmation, but many times in life. 

The grace of baptism is a real gift of the Holy Spirit, rebirth to new life as children of God, but it remains in us like a seed in the ground awaiting the right moment to grow and flourish and bear fruit. This comes when we become conscious of God at work in us and in the world, and we make our own decision to turn to the Lord and follow his way. 

In fact the life of a Christian should be a continual conversion, a turning to the Lord in the ordinary stuff of daily life, in our discipline of prayer and the sacraments and living a good Christian life. But there are also distinct moments of renewing our commitment, our decision for Jesus. At the liturgy on Easter day for example we all renew our baptismal promises together. 

And there are also moments of crisis in life, which bring us back once again to Jesus and his message of salvation. Times of loss and darkness and challenge will come to us. But these can work for good if they strip away our illusions and self-reliance and bring us back to the Lord to believe and trust in him more fully, more deeply. 

Because we too, like the 70, are called to be his disciples, to work with him in spreading the good news of the Kingdom of God. Arjun and Raya join us today as the latest new disciples, called and chosen by Jesus to follow in his way. And they are a reminder to all of us of our own calling and the work we have to do for his Kingdom.